


eternity on a loop, death on our hands

by aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, Dark, Love/Hate, M/M, Mistakes were made, Non-Linear Narrative, Reincarnation, Writing Exercise, ambiguous situation, cycles and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 14:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18994255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm/pseuds/aaronwarnerisabeautifulstorm
Summary: Hisoka smiles, fangs a-blazing, the edge of a card held to the frantic up-down of his swallowing throat. Wind picks up the loose strands of his untamed hair, blowing the crimson mass around as if it were made of sun limbs.Illumi feels his hopes dashing against his feet. His bottomless anger finding no foundations, his nen no support.Hate and love, Hisoka said to him years ago, the secret of a stolen kiss still clinging to the blush of his lips,forever as one.





	eternity on a loop, death on our hands

**Author's Note:**

> *Plays g note into infinity*

Hisoka is shy of reaching thirteen years of age when he dies. He is walking the streets with his shabby shoes and untied laces and pierced ears and paint soaked knee-high socks, looking for a thrill. It finds him in the form of a much younger boy, enormous eyes, cape of hair swinging and swift hands that input a knife under the slope of his downturned chin before he can even breathe. He tastes his blood (acrid and acid) pooling at the back of his throat, and the last thing he sees is the wonder of hunger thrashing in the infinity of the boy’s eyes.

 

 

Eight years old, abandoned by his parents, alone in the streets, starved and filthy. Throttled in an alley by an older man with a doll’s face. He sings him a song of rebirth and eternal love with a most familiar voice. Little Hisoka leaves finally, closes his eyes, the disturbingly calm voice soothing the tear-struck mounds of his cheeks.

 

 

Twenty five year old Hisoka loves photography. A long haired beauty he has seen on campus grounds asks him for a photo session, pays in cash even, mechanical smile upfront. He doesn’t find a reason to refuse him, can’t think of one reason that would explain the cold shiver circulating the line of his spine, not until they find themselves alone in his rented apartment and the strange beauty shoves a cleaver right through the center of his chest, black eyes never leaving his own, noses touching in a mockery of intimacy as he struggles not to choke.

 

 

The small figure is nearly imperceptible in the darkness. The drunken man barely has the chance to turn around and address the silent follower with a hazy, glazed stare before he is sentenced to a quick end by the impact of a bullet in-between the sarcastic arches of his brows. Red blood pulses steadily from the circular wound, just as red as the dead man’s hair.

 

 

_Hisoka smiles, fangs a-blazing, the edge of a card held to the frantic up-down of his swallowing throat. Wind picks up the loose strands of his untamed hair, blowing the crimson mass around as if it were made of sun limbs._

_Illumi feels his hopes dashing against his feet. His bottomless anger finding no foundations, his nen no support._

**Hate and love,** _Hisoka said to him years ago, the secret of a stolen kiss still clinging to the blush of his lips,_ **forever as one** _._

 

 

The boy with the green spiked hair and guileless inquisitive orbs says, out of the blue, a little hesitant, “You should have stopped, before it went too far. He has snapped, you know. Now it will never end.” He blinks, and he looks like one of those action figures; plastic happiness, eternally plastered on their plastic faces.  “But then again, you and I are not exactly good at self-control, now, are we?” Hisoka, mystified, angry for motives he can’t disentangle, demands to know what he means by that, but his neighbors’ kid shrugs, tilts his head towards the sky, and claims he doesn’t remember what they were talking about.

The following day finds Hisoka lying in the middle of the street. His back is broken, so are his legs, he is losing blood faster than the frenzied laps this thoughts are taking, trying to accept the fact that his cervical spine is probably shattered in thousands of  fragments. The driver that crashed into him climbs out of his car, a deadly elegance in his movements that, even as he is dying, reminds Hisoka of something bittersweet. The silent man merely stands there, observes him as he bleeds to death, a fond glint in the spiraling darkness of his eyes.

 

 

_He catches him by accident, by the miracle of a throwaway glance to the side,—red strands, red mouth, make-up layered cheeks, eternal— flourishing and helplessly clueless, and he can’t help it, can’t stop watching him go, watching him come. He is happy and thriving and not haunted by his sin. Not a memory of what he has done clouds his nights or steals his joy. His smiles aren’t fair, and neither is the clean canvas of his neck. He cannot let it go, is what he has on his mind the first time, blood gathering around his feet, arms full of flickering warmth and—_

_He cannot let it go._

 

Hisoka meets Illumi at a party. Or at least, that is what the young man says his name is, stomach bare, skin-tight jeans and leather jacket draped over his trim shoulders. Hisoka is all blind instincts, intoxicated notions, throaty words, and this Illumi is soft eloquence, slyness hidden behind dull reactions and slow sentences, but Hisoka still laughs against the curve where snappy clavicles meet neck and takes the silent business major by the hand to the artificial privacy of one of the rooms upstairs. They make out, stumble in a heated tangle of lust and need towards the bed. Illumi rides him— hips bearing down on hips, pelvis colliding with pelvis, eyes on eyes—, touches him with reverent fingers, as if he will never get to feel the stuttering tremble of Hisoka’s abs beneath his hands again. Illumi kisses him, open-mouthed. Soft. Gentle. Then efficiently twists Hisoka’s head far to the side, at the worst possible angle, and bone breaks loudly as the now limp body finishes inside him.

 

 

There is always a ravenous edge to the way his boyfriend looks at him. A ravenous tinge to the fingers that pry in the clasp of sucking lips. A ravenous turn to the mold of teeth on the shell of his ear. A ravenous touch to the tender kiss he deposits on the tip of his nose. Almost like he is holding a deep, insightful, depthless desire in chains.

When Hisoka falls ill, Illumi’s ravenous ways do not stop. The charm drips away from his skin and his smiles and even his style; despite that, Illumi treats him the same. Hisoka watches red spill from his finger because of a paper cut, Hisoka nearly drowns while bathing, Hisoka’s feet slip and his head encounters the tiles of the wall. Illumi watches the red spill too, the calloused, white skin and the red drooling wound, watches without blinking as Hisoka coughs water from his lungs, flushed and pink, hair wet and curled, the desperate opening of his panting mouth, watches his prone body slumped against the wall, immobile, vulnerable, his head leaking fluid which is the incessant color of his hair, watches it all with the same ravenous nature, waiting. The spark never disappears, not even when he cares for him, prepares his meals, brushes his hair, washes the vomit from his clothes. Not even when he is handling Hisoka’s IV drip does he cease looking ravenous.

In this life, Hisoka dies peacefully in his sleep.

 

 

_Kikyou’s shrills provoke the impromptu flight of beasts and men alike. Milluki holds her, the sobbing lump she has become, eyes unseeing. Next to him, Silva is robbed of faculties, holding in the vibrations of unfathomable despair. Illumi is hardly there, hardly conscious, hardly a functioning being at all as the world around him spins and spins like a hellish merry-go-round._

_Kalluto is dead._

_Killua’s bloodshot eye and blood stained flesh and clothes underline this with twisted severity. Especially because he is the one holding his brother’s husk in his too stringy arms, arms that were trained to kill and maim others, not to bear the weight of his own brethren. The left side of his face is missing a chunk of meat, one of his wrists is more bone than skin at this juncture, his right leg is splintered all the way down from the knee, and he is missing one glaring Zoldyck trait: one of his precious blue eyes._

_He says, staring at Illumi with his one eye and a gaping socket, “Hisoka sends his regards.”_

 

This time it is faster and less violent than most. Hisoka wakes in the middle of the night, in his bed, with black tentacles ticking his face, a man sitting on his lap, and a knife buried several inches deep into his left pectoral, tickling his heart. Hisoka gulps, a voice somewhere says, _huh, this is familiar_.

 

 

His adoptive father is poisoning him. His life has been slowly draining from the moment he set foot inside the house. From the moment their eyes met, young Hisoka knew that the intentions of the man who wanted to adopt him were far more sinister and selfish than what they appeared on the surface. Something about the flutter of his lashes as he looked at Hisoka, something about his tone when he spoke to him, something about the warmth of his hands as he clasped his jaw with too harsh fingers, told him to stand on his toes. His new father cooks for him every day. No matter what he always finds time to cook Hisoka’s meals every day. A business man—making time to cook for his weak and sickly adopted son. One afternoon Hisoka denies him, says no to the plate of hot soup placed in front of him, and Illumi Zoldyck’s eyes crinkle, his grim mouth shifts into an ear-splitting grin. He takes a mouthful of soup for himself and then shoves his face close enough to Hisoka’s to plaster his grin onto the teen’s slack jaw.

 

 

_Do not lie. That is not why you do this. You hate him because he took himself away first._

 

Well, to be fair, no one expected to be murdered in a communal pool. Hisoka would try to tell that to the man who is currently pushing his head down, but he is too busy gurgling on chlorine to do that. His nails catch on the man’s bare wrists, drawing blood that tints the water in echoes of burgundy. He is pushing his legs, kicking around. A bulge drags against his thigh; ragged breathing reaches him over the ruckus of his struggling, an ugly sound that is torn and broken rings eerily across the closed space. As he begins to lose himself, he thinks he feels drops fall on top of his heaving chest.

 

 

Simpler, perhaps, is sometimes sweeter. Hisoka’s lab partner suddenly stabs him on the side of his neck with a pencil in front of the entire classroom, and the redhead can only giggle, smiling gold boring into the vacancy in front, until the laughs expire, morph to choked groans, and a bloody imprint is left on the silent teenager’s pale forehead, straight from dying lips.

 

 

In a field of roses, Hisoka is laid down to die. His gaze searches for the man who will be the one to rob him of his last breath. Nightmare eyes patiently trace Hisoka’s crumbling features, a hand carefully twirls locks of dyed hair on his elegant knuckles. He bends his neck low enough to kiss the now blue tips, lashes curling towards the swell of his cheekbones. This way, Illumi resembles a fairy prince. Unfairly beautiful, unfairly cruel.

Hisoka wonders aloud, the rasp of his voice dissonant in contrast to the harmonious melody the two of them represent, “Why?”

Illumi’s lids shoot open. “Because I…”

 

 

_Hisoka will look at him, unsmiling, fists tight at his sides, a grim expression over his usually mirthful one._

_He will answer, confident as only he can be: “You do not. Let me prove it to you. How fragile your love is.”_

 

“Because you deserve nothing less than this.”

 

 

Hisoka goes to him, to the beautiful creature of mysterious aura and serious semblance, the way a calf heads off to slaughter. Innocently longing.

“This is the only way I know how to show my love,” the man whispers to Hisoka’s convulsing neck, rubbing blood stuck to the corner of his lips, licking a hot streak down the throbbing, prominent vein trekking an angry path on his throat and shoulder. Hisoka hiccups, moves numb fingertips to circle around the handle of the dagger tearing at his insides. The man professes love, then proceeds to gut him like a pig over fresh asphalt.

 

 

He is old. Older than he should be. He has always felt that life is an ephemeral tumult of all ventures unrealized. This is cemented further in his mind, when the pale shadow of man sits on the bench next to him, the vivid picture of what immortality should strive for. Before he can savor the moment, there are hands cupping his face, and they feel like they have belonged there, on his decayed flesh, forever. His bones creak when he shifts, his skin wrinkles when he grins like he used to on much more gracious days.

“It took me too long to find you,” the black haired man’s eyes are burning. His tone is regretful. “I should have been here sooner.” The old man nods sagely, understanding.

Then, he begs: “Let go.”

Hisoka’s fragile head pops like a water balloon in the shaking hold of those voracious hands.

 

 

_He clutches him to his chest, wills that his body heat warms him, murmurs manic nonsense to the crown of his head. But the smell of sugar-touched blood is overwhelming, it attaches to everything in range, to his ears and his hair and his nose and his mouth, and he wants to throw up—_

_“Hisoka, wake up. I am not done with you yet.” Illumi’s livid enough that his teeth chatter, his words sound contrite, madness-stricken._

_But there is no response. Hisoka’s lips are blue and limp. Touched in sugar and blood. His head is so light, Illumi ponders cruelly, in his arms. Weightless, without support. He drags his eyeballs out in gelatinous strings. He kisses him, robbing the last drop of vividness. And there is still no response._

 

 

The Hunter’s Exam. The Ants. Greed Island. Kukuroo Mountain. Padokea. Yorknew. Heaven’s Arena.  Hisoka, dashing his skull against rocks. Hisoka, dousing life on fire. Hisoka, poking beasts, bearing the clench of bites, the fruits of his efforts.

Everything is back to the way it used to.

 

 

Months before the exam Illumi Zoldyck finds him. Hisoka doesn’t know him then, doesn’t recognize the ancient bloodlust that speaks of lifetimes and never-ending chronicles of murderous yearnings, and doesn’t know how to decipher the meaning of clawed digits aiming for a painful kill, the soundless beating of his own heart. Soon, he is bathed in bruises, there are cuts on his face which color the sobriety of his lipstick-less lips, his arms are traversed by pins and his attacker looks at him in a profound, fixated manner that confounds him.

“I am sorry, but what was it exactly that I did?”

There is something out of order in this desperate show of intensity. In the black spheres that should not know how to burn to begin with, as if Hisoka has ignited them without his knowing.

“You need to die.” The man states, an affectionate drawl to the scratches he plants on Hisoka's abdomen as he seeks for death.

 

 

He does not die that night. Or the next or the one after or the one after that. Fate has deemed it so that the original script stays uncorrupted.

Still, Illumi tries.

 

 

“Let me kill you,” Illumi’s eyes are blown, exorbitant, his half-made breaths just as invested, the grip of his hand on Hisoka’s ankle insistent. Cheeks flushed, murder sprinkled on every pore, he is a painting of twisted depravity. Hisoka does not understand, does not appreciate the sad, fumbling feeling in his gut. He kicks him in the face at the same time his ankle gets squeezed to its limits.

 

 

They are on the blimp, heading towards the third phase of the exam. Hisoka’s neck is uncomfortably bent, there is a pin nosing his jugular, a blank stare shoved into the joy-wearing mouth he is faking. The tremors of arousal he feels coiling in his navel do not help his situation at all. Illumi Zoldyck— bland, family oriented, boring, someone he has never met before or wished to meet— sinks the nails of his right hand into Hisoka’s bare hip, rubs the sharp point of his nen-covered pin over his tense jaw.

“I hate you,” he says. Hisoka believes him. Believes the canines that are marking his throat. Believes the ferocity they display as they grapple with the skin and begin to pull. Believes the pin that is about to sink in, believes the guilt that renders him utterly and completely—

 

 

Before anything can happen, they are discovered. Illumi is detained. They are both disqualified from the Hunter’s exam.

Illumi keeps trying.

 

 

Eventually, he succeeds.

 

 

Hisoka, on his knees, staring at Illumi’s triumphant and eerie expression, heart-stealing fingers incrusted into his scalp, hands begging at the assassin’s thighs, mouth hovering dangerously close to his crotch, asks, taken by wonder, “For how long, Illumi?” There are only so many times he can brush death, only so many times he can encounter Illumi this way and not start to feel the taste of truth coating his tongue and his thoughts in shades of agonizing clarity. “How long will you keep doing this? When will you have enough?”

~~Move on.~~

Illumi leans down, indulgently sucks a violent purple bruise on the spot where he would have normally drawn a star. “Hate and love, forever as one.” When Illumi sucks the air instead from his mouth, the residues of his anger evident in the overbearing way he licks the back of his teeth and nips at his lips, Hisoka returns the obscure concoction there involved; the passion, the disgust, the sweetness and the bitterness, all of the torn scraps of feelings past. Resigned, he listens to Illumi as he repeats against the bite mark placed on the edge of his jaw, “Forever.”

 

 

_The card slings in a perfect circle with a velocity that Illumi cannot parallel. A bleeding ring is drawn against white. Light is left glistening within golden. Hisoka’s head falls, squishes at contact, rolls in the dirt until it stops a few feet away from where Illumi uselessly falters, gawks at the small bursts of blood flying from Hisoka’s severed neck, pins helplessly hanging from his fingers._

_The trees shrivel, the earth cracks and the birds take to the skies when Illumi’s overflowing rage entwines with his aura and finally detonates._

 

 

It starts again.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to share your comments and grievances in the comments section or to message me on myTumblr: loki-of-war.


End file.
